Mercedes-Benz Operating System Will Put Smartphone Mirroring in Cars to Shame

Ever since connectivity has become a solid part of our lives, carmakers have tried to keep up with the times and integrate such things into their products. At first, we were offered simple phone holders to place our smartphones on and use for navigation and entertainment purposes.

Then third-party head units came into the world, eliminating the phone holders and offering a much better interaction and view on a much larger screen. Carmakers saw the merits of this, and started integrating their own head units into cars right from the assembly lines. In doing so, they’ve discovered that, although smartphone-native apps for navigation and such are more than suitable, operating systems and other native apps are needed for control of the car's functions.

So carmakers started making their own head units - operating systems combos. Most of them are a mix of proprietary apps for control of vehicle functions and third-party solutions needed for navigation and music, available through Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone integration.

Mercedes’ current infotainment system is called Mercedes-Benz User Experience. We all know it as MBUX, and it has been around since early 2018, when it was first deployed on that year’s A-Class.

That means five years on the market, and in a world when technology jumps ahead every few months that’s too much. So Mercedes plans to replace the MBUX (or rather evolve it significantly) by the middle of this decade.

It will do so with something called simply Mercedes-Benz Operating System (MB.OS). That’s right, an in-house made operating system for cars that will make smartphone integration obsolete, and which will make its way into all the vehicles the Germans will be making on the Mercedes Modular Architecture (MMA) platform.

A small list of details about MB.OS was released this week, and they each show just how massive the solution is. We’ll try to break them down in the lines below so we can make sense of everything.

INFOTAINMENT

One of the most important elements of the MB.OS, at least to these eyes, is the full integration of Google Maps Platform into the operating system. As per its own account, and also to our knowledge, Mercedes will thus become the first carmaker in the world to have Google Maps integrated into a branded navigation system. That basically means we’ll get all the power of Google Maps into a Mercedes-Benz navigation solution.

Then, the system will move right into the car many of the apps we currently enjoy with the help of smartphones, including YouTube, games (including arcade ones through Antstream), music, and productivity. This last bit will come as an integration of some of today’s most popular conferencing apps, Webex and Zoom, but also China’s Tencent.

AUTONOMY

MB.OS will not only handle infotainment, but the cars’ autonomous features as well. All MMA cars will be packed with Level 2 attributes, while a select few will go as high as Level 3.

Level 2 is what most cars presently on the market are already capable of. Here’s where we get systems like adaptive cruise control, stop-and-go, or lane centering. Level 3 adds to that the car’s capability to drive itself in traffic conditions, merge, or adapt to weather conditions.

In Mercedes cars, we’re told Level 3 tech will work at speeds of up to 130 kph (81 mph). To do that, the MB.OS will rely on NVIDIA-sourced software and the Orin system-on-chip. A number of sensors will feed data into the OS, and so will a LiDAR developed by Luminar.

SERVICES
The MB.OS will also have a component handling the services Mercedes-Benz plans to offer in its cars. Some of them already exist, but they’ll be bundled into three main categories for easier use: MB.CONNECT, MB.CHARGE, and MB.DRIVE.

The MB.CONNECT will include most of the features offered today when it comes to navigation, remote control, Guard 360, entertainment, and communications. More features will be announced at a later date.

Electric vehicles will benefit from MB.CHARGE, a solution that according to the German carmaker will provide “access to flexible and attractive tariffs” based on how much car owners drive. Mercedes owners using this will also have priority access to the company’s own charging network.

MB.DRIVE is the one handling automated driving systems, and will allow for cars to be upgraded with new and more potent capabilities.

To be powered by the NVIDIA DRIVE platform and an undetailed machine learning technology, the MB.OS will use for visual interface the car’s full-width screen, will play sound through the existing speakers, and will be voice-controlled. Over-the-air updates will be provided, of course, and Mercedes expects its operating system to be continuously improved and scaled.

The company is not developing all of this only because it wants to please its customers, but also because the MB.OS will become an important source of revenue. Expectations are that money coming from MB.CONNECT and MB.DRIVE alone will grow to “a low-to-mid single-digit billion euro figure” by 2025, with the potential of going to a high single-digit billion euro sum by the end of the decade.

As a side note, we’ll soon have an idea of what the MB.OS will be capable of, as an earlier version of it is part of the third generation MBUX system to be deployed on the E-Class from later this year.